


pressed between the pages

by sweetwatersong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Friendship, Partnership
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-16 04:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3474149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of unconnected Clint/Natasha ficlets too small to be posted separately, and eventually ranging from fluff to mission fic and alternate universes. Ratings vary from G to T.</p><p>Fourth chapter: "Mementos." Drabbles about moments with the little things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. dancers

**Author's Note:**

> When you write drabbles and vignettes, as you do, you need a place to put them all. In this collection you'll find the brief moments I've written specifically for Clint/Natasha. They'll be grouped loosely by theme and have two or more per chapter, given that most of them are under 300 words. Warnings will accompany each drabble as appropriate.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bond between an archer and an assassin.

_untitled i_ , g, for frea_o  
(No one truly understands. This is the debt she owes him.)

What makes him beloved to her is the simple truth that even on the hardest days, the worst days – and there have been so many ‘worst days’ – he can make her smile. She doesn’t know if he understands how precious that is, how rare and treasured those moments are; that she keeps them like diamonds in the palm of her hand and counts them in the darkness, each casting rainbows across her skin. 

(Never real, never physical, never trinkets tucked into a pasteboard box that can be stolen and snatched from her, shaken in her face with accusations of emotions, of _feeling_ something, spittle landing on her cheek as the faceless trainer sneers. She is a weapon, is a tool, is nothing but what they make of her – and they will make _such things_ of her.

Iron, she learns, cannot feel.)

She loves him because he makes her smile, because he lightens her heart and brings joy to her lips – and he does so because he loves her.

 

 _find me in the alleys,_ pg

She is a ballerina in the backstreets, graceful and elegant and powerful beyond measure. You think she belongs here in the wet leaves and scattered trash, turning the world around her axis with the flick of a hand, the snap of a foot; breaking men and hearts with equal ease.

(They all look for her in the daylight, the nighttime, convinced that she is ghosting down the streets among them, and you laugh as she moves with poise and precision through the winding ways these men discard.

She belongs here in the gentle light, the words of sinners scrawled around her head, her only audience the dead the dying and you. You applaud her in the clearing rain, arrows like flowers around her feet.

She is a dancer, lithe and smooth and breath-taking, and you follow in her wake through the wreckage that's left behind.)

 

 _foxtrot tango,_ g

It's a dance between the fine lines of truth and obfuscation, shadows and light and the dark underbelly of reality, of them: that not all fights are worthy, and not all kills are just. But she leads them elegantly and merrily along that distinction, spinning and sweeping and deferring when someone cuts too close, gets too near the heart of it. And what's more, Clint has to admire, is that they want to believe her. The half-lies spill from her smiling lips, from behind her down-swept lashes, and the reporters follow her tune as merrily as if she is the Pied Piper come back to life, her hymns ones of fact and not destruction.

"That was a neat trick," he informs her when she gathers her presence around her and glides out, coming back to the off-set entryway he's been watching her from. She almost smiles.

"I could teach you sometime."

He can't help it; he snorts with laughter at the idea. “I’m a one-trick pony with one trick already, ‘Tasha. I’m the soldier, remember?”

Natasha leans in close with the sweet scent of peppermint wreathing around her, clean and crisp and so different from the dust and rubble they have found themselves in times before, keeping the world from knowing the true extent of its wounds.

"And I'm the spy," she murmurs with mischief in her eyes, almost close enough to kiss, before she turns and continues down the hallway.

Clint watches her go, knowing full well he dances to her tunes as prettily as the fools in the front rows out there - and shakes his head, grinning.

For Natasha Romanoff, the dance is worth the price.


	2. autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moments from the fall.

_one tsp allspice,_ g, for desertport

They go apple-picking on a Tuesday, when the families are all in school or at work and the orchard is almost empty but for a handful of other late-comers. It's not a sunny day, by no means perfectly blue and cloudless, but the gray skies never break for rain and the cool wind is soft on their faces, musical in the leaves.

She lays out the preparations on the Sunday they get back from another Avengers mission, placing cutting board and knives and spices with precision. Clint watches the football game and sneaks slivers of Macintosh and Gala when she isn't looking, stuffing them in his cheeks and playing innocent for everything he's worth when she gives him a side-long look. After Natasha finally sends him back to the couch with a curt glance and several overtly menacing knife flips, he calls out the score and listens to the rhythm of the blade against board, swift and economical until the scent of cinnamon fills the air.

He complains about having to wait, a whole eight hours 'Tasha, why, couldn't they have made pie?, until she curls up with him on the couch and the quiet afternoon slides away in warmth and lazy hours, in the comfort of contact, of simply _being_.

The applesauce is sweet and spiced and still warm when the sun rises on Monday morning, a golden glow as Clint offers her a spoon standing barefoot in loose pajamas pants in her kitchen, _their_ kitchen, and Natasha smiles.

 _Was it worth it?_ She asks, taking the spoon, and he knows she means more than just this, knows and smiles back.

 _Of course it was,_ he replies, and slides his arm around her.

 

 _disney magic_ , pg, for cloud_atlas

Natasha stared at Clint in silence when he stepped out of the bedroom.

"What do you think?" He fixed the bright yellow hat perched on his head. When she didn't respond he spread his hands. "The point of this party was to dress up like the Disney character you're most like, right?"

"I think we were all assuming you'd be Robin Hood," she informed him, her voice giving away nothing. Clint grinned at her.

"Where's the fun in that? Besides, I wasn't going to get you into a princess hat-thing for Maid Marian, and after last July I'm pretty sure no one wants to see me without pants on again."

"Thank you for sparing us," she replied dryly, seeming to shake herself out of her own thoughts. "If you're actually going to go in that..."

"Yup."

"...then let's get this over with. I need more vodka to handle that."

As it turned out, Natasha forewent the vodka in favor of a crystal-clear memory of Steve in Princess Aurora's dress (with Maria as an accompanying Prince Charming) and a lion-maned Tony arguing the fine points of Disney vs. other animation studios with a brown overall-bedecked Bruce.

The fact that no one questioned why Clint was dressed as an elephant with paper-mâché ears and all said something about the archer. Given that this was Clint, however, he was more than happy to point out that Dumbo had been a born circus performer, and had also liked to see things from a height. Natasha's only comment on that was that Clint's style of 'flying' happened to be more like 'falling.'

Later that night he tucked a black feather behind Natasha's ear, fingertips brushing over her cheek, and gave her a smile that made her wonder when the party would be over.

"The suit looks good on you," he said, nodding towards the (i) symbol she had carefully laid over a dyed older catsuit. "Bet it looks better off."

For that Natasha gave him an 'hm' in response, watching the Grecian "half" God of Thunder leading a lavendar-dressed Jane in a dance.

"Next year," she told him, "we should go as Eva and Wall-E."

"What, you thought the party was bad enough that you want to pack a gun as part of your costume?" Clint asked, amused.

"More that when I have a mission you always seem to be bumbling along in my trail," Natasha replied and he laughed, the sound carrying bright and merry over music and conversations. She smiled, closing her eyes to soak in the warmth of the moment and the comfort that came from being among friends.

In another year, she couldn't say whether there would be an Avengers team, a Tower to call home, a private and ridiculous party for fun. But Natasha hoped, not for the first time, that there would.

(The party ended when Pepper had to step in to keep Bruce and Tony from attempting their own Pumpkin' Chunkin' from the top of the Tower, despite Thor’s protests that he could catch said pumpkins before they would land. And it turned out Clint was right: Elastigirl's suit did look just as good off as her as it did on.)


	3. snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moments from winters.

_getting schooled_ , g, for crazy4orcas

“Let me show you how it’s done,” Clint tells Alice, the snow packing between his gloves into a perfect ball. He lobs it across the playground easily, hitch in his shoulder from an IED nigh invisible, and watches with satisfaction as it explodes across Natasha’s dark coat.

Her daughter laughs only to clap her hands over her mouth when Natasha turns to face them, payback in her eyes - but Clint knows he’s really in trouble when she silently holds out her hand for a snowball from his silent and all-too-helpful son Thomas.

“Uh-”

It catches him on the corner of his jaw, spreading cold ice down his neck and ear, and the war is on.

She offers him her scarf afterwards, a mute peace offering of crimson and knitted wool, and he accepts it as their kids run gleefully through the newly fallen snow.

 

 _would you like to build_ , pg, for andibeth82

This she knows: snow softens. Shapes gentle under its heavy touch, bowing and curving until they are indistinct and unknowable, familiar and strange all at once.

This she knows: snow kills. Men die in its fury, limbs frozen and lungs chilled; children die in its arms, curled up for warmth and hope and rescue. Women die in its soul, knives heavy and eyes burning and triumphant over a final test from their mentors.

This she knows: snow conceals. Truths and terrors, mountains and monsters are all lulled to sleep by its ice-song, hidden from sight and salvation; they are erased from the long path of history, until nothing is left but the drifts and their demons.

All this she knows in her bones, in her heart, in the heat that flares at the thought of the winter lying just outside the window, a step beyond their door - and yet when he invites her to come, this partner she is still growing used to, his words words muffled by a glove held between his teeth and the thump of old boots broken out from dusty closets, she finds the word _no_ does not come to her lips.

He makes angels, and men, and lumpy figures he swears are meant to be circus animals from his youth; she builds a fortress while he is occupied, her hands shaping bricks and corners on their own as she studies him from the corner of her eye. When he looks up, meeting her gaze over the strong walls she’s raised between herself and the world, he pauses - and she sees in his face that he knows, that he has been there, that what he makes out of the chaos around him is a place to hide, to take a stand.

He dares her to a snowball fight ten minutes later, his ammo tucked under his arm, and she accepts.

As Clint tells it to the Avengers years later, it ended in a draw. Natasha stays silent, snow and ghosts and a young woman still new to her freedom drifting through her eyes - but she smiles when he looks at her.


	4. mementos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moments about the little things.

_a cup of kindness yet_ , g, title and summary from _Auld Lang Syne._  
 _But we’ve wandered many a weary foot, since auld lang syne._ The comedown from a mission, in something as simple as a mug of tea.

The door swings open and Clint enters cautiously, sitting down gently on the corner of the safe house bed. He sets the chipped floral tray across her blanket-covered legs, making sure the tumbler of orange juice doesn’t tip over, and offers her the tea in his other hand.

"Brought you something," he says, keeping his gaze on the gun-metal gray mug. He is being careful; good. She stares at him for a long moment before she leans the extra inch forward and takes the steaming drink from him, her fingertips settling onto the glazed porcelain and purposefully avoiding contact.

She has to be careful, too.

Holding onto bits of herself like she grasps the warm mug, Natalia - _Natasha_ draws the mug closer, never looking away from him. She licks her lips, tongue running over cracks that no longer bleed and cuts that have begun to heal, and finds her voice.

"Thank you."

He glances up then, a hint of a smile quirking his lips.

"Welcome back."

"How’d you know?" She asks wryly, almost – almost – in jest.

"Well, the fact that I wasn’t brained with the mug was a good sign…"

She nearly grins, too tired to do anything more, and considers at the peace offering.

Natalia doesn’t drink tea; she doesn’t believe in its medicinal properties. Natasha does. But as she traces the rim of the mug with her fingertip, she knows that the healing isn’t in the drink; it’s who you share it with.

 

_a favor for my love,_ pg, for workerbee73

He pulls his vest off easily, setting it down on the table to inspect the graze along his ribs where a machete came too close to his heart. She stares at the splashes of dried blood across the purple and black, shunting her gaze away only when looking any longer will draw his attention. As she gives his knife a cursory inspection to see if it's still usable he turns the discarded armor around.

"Well, this is shit," he says, tugging a piece off of the shredded vest; it’s miraculously unstained by the blood that seems to be everywhere else. "I'm going to kill someone in R&D for this. Don't they know people use regular weapons too?"

She snorts softly because he expects her too, because she normally would; after all, who are they to talk about 'normal' weapons? He tosses the scrap onto the countertop, and when she places his knife down her fingers stretch out and take the soft black cloth away with them. 

"You can keep it," he says, amused. She glances at him, looks back at the cloth, and silently tucks it into her belt.

They never mention it again, but she keeps the rag in her suit and pulls it out on long, lonely nights when her muscles are stiff and the quiet invades even her heart. Eyes trained on the house, the mark, the scope, she brushes it against her cheek and holds it there - and the weight of her winter past lightens a little.

"Why do you want this?" A medic asked her once, her fingers white against his bloody hand. She held on to the fabric despite his resistance and the surgery and the long bleak hours in recovery, keeping her silence because she couldn't tell him the truth.

Barton, who accepted her faults and her burdens, who went to face the enemies hunting her and kill them because he said that anyone after her was going to have to deal with him too; Barton...

She breathes into the fabric and feels the bite of the cold fade away.


End file.
